lady's uncle, and--"

Mrs. Vickerton hesitated, and looked at the vicar's wife with a
slightly puzzled air.

"And who?"

"Of course Mr. Robin."

XII

It is the practice of Providence often to ignore the claims of poetic
justice. Properly, the Symford children ought to have been choked by
Priscilla's cakes; and if they had been, the parents who had sent them
merrymaking on a Sunday would have been well punished by the
undeniable awfulness of possessing choked children. But nobody was
choked; and when in the early days of the following week there were in
nearly every cottage pangs being assuaged, they were so naturally the
consequence of the strange things that had been eaten that only Mrs.
Morrison was able to see in them weapons being wielded by Providence
in the cause of eternal right. She, however, saw it so plainly that
each time during the next few days that a worried mother came and
asked advice, she left her work or her meals without a murmur, and
went to the castor-oil cupboard with an alacrity that was almost
cheerful; and seldom, I suppose, have such big doses been supplied and
administered as the ones she prescribed for suffering Symford.

But on this dark side of the picture I do not care to look; the
party, anyhow, had been a great success, and Priscilla became at
one stroke as popular among the poor of Symford as she had been in
Lothen-Kunitz. Its success it is true was chiefly owing to the
immense variety of things to eat she had provided; for the
conjuror, merry-go-round, and cocoa-nuts to be shied at that she
had told young Vickerton to bring with him from Minehead, had all
been abandoned on Tussie's earnest advice, who instructed her
innocent German mind that these amusements, undoubtedly admirable
in themselves and on week days, were looked upon askance in England
on Sundays.

"Why?" asked Priscilla, in great surprise.

"It's not keeping the day holy," said Tussie, blushing.

"How funny," said Priscilla.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Why," said Priscilla, "in Kun--" but she pulled herself up just as
she was about to give him a description of the varied nature of Sunday
afternoons in Kunitz.

"You must have noticed," said Tussie, "as you have lived so long in
London, that everything's shut on Sundays. There are no theatres and
things--certainly no cocoa-nuts."

"No, I don't remember any cocoa-nuts," mused Priscilla, her memory
going over those past Sundays she had spent in England.